


Tanatos, Too

by Weaponized



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky Barnes as Thanatos, Character Death, God of Death, It's the end of the line, M/M, Personification of Death, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Retired Steve Rogers, Silver Fox Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:55:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25308601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weaponized/pseuds/Weaponized
Summary: Bucky Barnes died over a hundred years ago, falling to the icy rocks at the bottom of a pitiless ravine in the Alps. Steve Rogers continued on without him. Soldiered, served, protected.And now he sits alone. Retired from duty, condemned by himself to solitude in a lonely house at the end of the line.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 18
Kudos: 59





	Tanatos, Too

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote a fic under the title Tanatos eight years ago for a friend, hence the name "Tanatos, Too". It was with a very different pairing in a very different fandom. But when I re-read it recently I couldn't stop thinking about shamelessly repurposing my own concept and doing this with it. So here it is: Steve Rogers at the end of the line.

Far-reaching tendrils of night drape across the sky, slowly consuming the pink imprint of the sun’s rays. Valleys and hills are leached of colour, a flood of grey consuming the forest and climbing the rocks of the river. In the window of a lonely house embedded deep into the lush embrace of isolation, a lamp twinkles into life, all the brighter for its solitary effort to combat the dark.

Captain Rogers sits by the lamp. The sprawling footprint of the house – his house – settles into night around him. A book is perched in his palm, dwarfed by long fingers and a thick wrist. He still appears young-ish, but simultaneously old beyond measure. A strange paradox of frozen youth and stooped, burdened history. Denied the pleasure of growing old for decades, even now he retains a rugged strength despite the silver sweep of his hair and the stark white of his beard. His hands are strong and pliant, not yet bent or swollen, and though his eyes are lined, their depth and wisdom springs more from true experience than superficial wrinkles. He is retired. Relieved of all duties. At home and alone.

The captain turns a page of the book with an economic curl of one finger and listens to the well of water rushing over rocks in the river outside. The breeze billows softly into the room through soft, gauzy drapes. It’s autumn and rain has only just finished falling, smothering the forest in the sound of tiny water droplets. The silence has crept in alongside the night, stealing over the house and its elegantly unkempt grounds, rushing one last gush of water through the brook, swollen after the day-long drizzle, and leaving the valley muted under a weight of quiet.

Lamplight glances off the plush, cream cushions and gilds the captain’s beard and furrowed brow. The room is cavernous and yet, scattered with furniture, plants, stacks of books and the odd picture frame or canvas, it cocoons itself. Ancient, elaborate wallpaper is visible at the edges of the hundred framed paintings hung on the single solid wall, interrupted only by a gaping, ancient stone fireplace. The rest of the walls are made up of open French doors, hung with billowing masses of white voile curtains, silently frothing in the breeze.

Eventually, the silence becomes so oppressively deliberate, the captain looks up from his page.

“Who’s there,” he asks, voice still strong and sure, a testament to his long history of command, if not his advanced years.

The long, filmy curtains seem to breathe the figure into existence, birthing him into the room like just another grasping shadow of nightfall. “Good evening, Steven Rogers,” says the long-awaited guest, politely.

Still sprawled on the couch, one leg propping his wrist, the captain stares at where the figure has materialised, unmoving, amongst the fluttering white. His voice is barely audible when he whispers, “Bucky?”

The serious face is hauntingly familiar, bowed lips soft and cheekbones hard. But Steven Rogers has had this dream before. Or one like it. The one where it seems stunningly obvious that Bucky Barnes hasn’t plummeted to his death from a speeding train under Captain Rogers’ command. The dream where Bucky is whole and young and beautiful. And loved.

The intruder moves, just one foot in front of the other, and shakes his head. Dark locks of curly hair kiss his forehead and his clothes are loose and dark, seeming to float about him. “Perhaps I was your Bucky once,” he smiles bashfully. “I’m sorry.”

“What do you mean?” Book limp in his hand, Steve feels an unfamiliar warmth infuse the deepest part of his chest and prickle behind his eyes – sensations so scorching, his dreams could never conjure them.

“I am Tanatos,” says the youthful incarnation.

Steve watches lips move and rumbles the name around his mind. Tanatos, the Greek god of death, lethal brother of sleep. He watches this soft and beautiful version of the man Steve lost almost 184 years ago. Not that Bucky hadn’t been beautiful then – he had been vital, warm and full of a wondrous energy even in the darkest moments. Even stripped to his barest elements by war, Bucky Barnes had been strong. In Steve’s mind, he was the antithesis of death.

Despite wearing a familiar crooked smile, the man before him now is neither battle-worn, nor a product of gruelling city life. Though he radiates youth and beauty, his skin is a cold, flawless cast, as if cut from marble. His long, clever fingers are not worn by work or smudged with dirt and oil like Bucky’s used to be, before he would painstakingly scrub them clean under the kitchen tap, determined to be clean and crisp, the dandy.

“You are Tanatos. Death?”

The figure nods his head, still smiling modestly, seemingly shy of his own voice, “I am death, in the flesh.”

Steve leans back to place his book neatly on the table at his elbow. “In the flesh, huh.” He remembers once standing at the back of an overcrowded theatre in Manhattan, Bucky pressed to his side, smelling of soap and hair pomade, gesturing wildly at the stage and straining to keep his voice below a whisper as he swept his eyes admiringly over the array of stunning girls under stage lights, _‘In the flesh, Stevie, huh!’_

Outside, an owl hoots softly, interrupting Steve’s memories. The sound of water and the rustle of the ever-present forest return to him slowly. Tanatos walks across the room, passing the clutches of furniture that scatter the space, trailing his hand over a stone sculpture that stands amid cabinets and a squat rack of books.

“You’ve been watching me,” Steve says.

“I watch all those who yearn for me,” comes the soft reply, addressed to the spines of the books Tanatos is appraising. All around the room are the trappings of a long life, lived too far beyond any peer, reduced to isolation and reflection.

“Why have you been watching me?”

“We all have our duties,” Tanatos raises his eyes – _Bucky’s_ eyes – to meet Steve’s. Close enough now that Steve can make out the way his eyebrows are soft smudges against his lids, how his gaze has an intensity like the taste of salt, sharp and moreish. “You know perhaps more about duty than most men.”

“I’m not surprised,” Steve says after a long pause, hands folded in his lap, “I’ve seen too much to be surprised that death walks the earth.”

The boy – because the manifestation standing before him is a youth in looks at least – is standing just a few steps from him now, bare toes just nudging at the lowest step to the small, raised piece of floor Steve has made his circle of lamp light.

There’s no response to his statement, and Tanatos merely continues to gaze at him, so Steve lets himself ruminate. “Death walks the earth… and wears a familiar face. Isn’t that the expression?”

Somehow, the moonlit cast of Bucky’s face softens at that, no longer appearing akin to a marble bust of Michael. “You have lived a very long and beautiful life. It has been full. Don’t let shame pollute your memories of living.”

“Is this shame?” Steve can hear the bitterness in his own voice, “I thought I was past shame.”

The youth lets his fingers trace the banister for a moment as he finally steps onto the carpeted mezzanine, standing before Steve. “You are obsessed by your perception of failure. You refuse to forgive yourself. You have abandoned everyone who once kept you from shame. Now you clothe yourself in nothing but longing for another chance.”

Steve watches the bare toes dig into plush carpet, not willing to raise his eyes and look into Bucky’s face, glaring down as he used to so often. _‘What were you thinking, throwing those no-good fists of yours at Bill the Butcher, Stevie!? You wanna get killed?’_

When he finally does raise his eyes though, overwhelmed by the need to see if Bucky’s words, spoken more than a hundred years ago, are echoed on the face of the being before him, it’s to find Tanatos watching him coolly, head slightly tilted, hands in his pockets.

“You’re wondering why I wear your long-lost friend’s face,” Tanatos asks.

Steve says nothing, but his fists clench.

“Many look at me and see only horror and suffering,” the bashful smile is back, “They don’t want me. But you have long waited to meet a certain face at death’s kind crossing. I merely look like the death you long for.”

“You really aren’t him?” Steve can hear the pleading in his own voice.

“I am death. I am not James Barnes.”

Steve nods, returning his gaze to the toes sunk into the carpet. After a long, drawn-out silence he takes a deep breath and asks, “Is he waiting for me? In the other place?”

He can’t see the reaction, but he hears a soft sigh and watches as long limbs gather until the angel Bucky is crouched before him, peering up into his face, “Steven Rogers, I do not know. I know only that you have called me here, and that you wish more than anything to be reunited with a man who left your side a hundred years ago. I am not merciful, or kind, or comforting. I’m here to take your life.”

Tanatos takes one hand from his pocket and reaches forward to place his palm against the back of Steve’s hand. The flesh is cool and white, soft and perfect.

“Let me take you,” Tanatos says into the dim space between them. “Let me take you where you want to go.”

Around them, the night is a rich symphony. The furniture is gilded by lamplight, framed by floating gauze and hemmed in by the sound of the forest rustling, endlessly shifting. Steve can feel his own heart thumping at the centre of it all, the only living thing in the landscape. A living thing that wishes to quit. To end the torture of thudding on. Waking up, feeding himself, using his heavy, unwilling eyes to see what colour the world has made of itself today. Useless, impotent rage still festers in him and he has stayed in this house alone and suffered it.

He’s been living inside this monotony for years. Punishing himself with no chosen deadline on when the suffering is enough.

It’s the easiest thing to lean back, rest his weary head on the back of the sofa, and look down into the eyes he’s longed for his whole life. “Take me. I’m ready to leave this godforsaken punishment behind.”

Tanatos watches him from the floor, hands resting on Steve’s thighs lightly, caressing the fabric there under his thumbs. “You’ve been so alone,” death calls to him, “but I’m here now. I can take away all your pain.”

“Do it.” Steve closes his eyes, expecting the ultimate end to be painful. He’s a super-soldier, even if an aged one, and has shrugged off gunshots, knife wounds, being frozen and a multitude of other potential deaths. But all he feels is the rustle of fabric and gentle fingers against his cheek. Soft, damp lips push against his, a sweet pleasure at the close of many lifetimes of self-denial. The kiss of death consumes him.

Around the pair of figures, huge, grey-feathered wings caress the air, stretched wide in ecstasy. Tanatos, child of night and darkness, lays his hand on the brow of the man who gave his body for justice and his soul for retribution. Captain Steven Rogers embraces death with a sigh of relief, succumbing to nothingness inside an unstoppable kiss.

⭐︎

Wings and strong, firm arms hold him. The great grey house sits squat and solid as it always has below them. His self-imposed prison of so many years. A retirement plan he forced upon himself. Rain has begun to fall again, placing the valley behind a soft screen of frosted glass.

“You are free now,” Tanatos’s lips press to his ear, devoid of the soft warmth of breath. “You can go on.”

In the house below his body lies empty, grey hair and beard gleaming in the pool of lamp light. His eyes are closed, legs and arms spread across the cushions as if he merely sat down with a heavy slump and slipped into slumber. Steve Rogers is gone, into the arms of death and on great wings into the abyss.

**Author's Note:**

> Well that's that. I used the Tanatos spelling, because Thanos probably comes from Thanatos and I don't want to associate my Tanatos with that guy.
> 
> Come hang out with me on Twitter [@im_weapon](https://twitter.com/im_weapon)


End file.
